Clockwork
by fakeLesley
Summary: Spock goes missing. A series of little drabbles explaining this, and our intrepid Captain Kirk's life thereafter. K/S flare. Umm my first attempt at fanfic so, phasers set to stun?
1. Clockwork

**Clockwork**

When Jim lifted his eyes to the window, he could feel silence. As it sometimes does, it waited motionlessly behind his shoulders while he peered through the general darkness that even the capital city of Loth could not outglow. At moments like this, he would forget why he was here. He would forget where he was, and the empty room on a starbase far away from time would ebb into a snowy blur.

It was cold, and as he laid his hands flat on the flawless stone desk, he felt like he was touching ice. The heavy coolness on his palms distracted him, and his eyes were pulled down to study the grey stone. Without apology, it reflected back his countenance, and Jim was startled to see his eyes look so tired, a refracted image from another dimension. He blinked at this man in slow motion.

He looked like a curved monument, silhouetted as a figure in shades of grey, and he did not move like a person would, but stayed as still as rock.

Spock had been missing for five months, six days, four hours, and, Jim's eyes shut, twenty-four solar minutes.

Of course, expeditions needed to go on, the _mission _needed to go on, everyone needed to fall back into their routine, allowing themselves to quiet emotions and regain their equanimity. And they did. Jim watched, detached, as if from behind a glass, as each of them found again their casual mien, wondering from far away if Spock would be proud of this ability to adapt. His senses seemed erased as he milled through time.

Starfleet offered their condolences, and a temporary search party, but with empathy exhaled, ordered their next mission in the same breath, like clockwork.


	2. Time stopped

**Time stopped**

He swore he felt the universe tremble above him as the blast rocketed his bones, eyes squinting fast and shutting instinctually as an avalanche of wreckage toppled over his head. The plume of red fire burst up behind him after the explosion (something else confusing and unnatural about this place).

The sky was _black_ and he could remember no more salient detail than that impermeable dome suffocated by decay. It was a starless space, and the thought alone could shake his mind.

Jim was running, he could see him _running_, his face nearly black from ash. It was apocalyptic, and he kept thinking of Armageddon, wondering if an ancient god would descend from the thundering sky to terminate the chaos of their universe.

That lone young man, his captain, transformed by the mayhem into raw adrenaline and herculean drive, doffed his civilized shell to shout noiseless words. He seemed like a titan, a character in a Hellenic design, as his throat bent indestructible words, hurling them across ravines and explosions, to stave off the end of the world.

He heard him ordering _evacuation _and eyes flicked rapidly, his body frozen for a torturous second, following the man in the gold shirt. His frantic dashing was enough to remind him to _move_.

The Treaty deal on Vrinda II turned terribly, terribly wrong, and his eyes were torn from the captain, cursing violently that he had arrived too late for the person who was now a motionless body before him. Shuddering suddenly—thoughts of regret were shattered by the violent explosions ripping him into the present, urging him against his years of training to _save himself_.

The ground below his feet was more cindered soot than soil, and he had never before witnessed such utter destruction. His heard a tearing shout and whipped around only to sense the urgency driving it, his eyes clouded instantly by a plume of singeing smoke.

He felt the blackness of the gas overwhelm his eyes and lungs, and had the sudden sense that his part in this disastrous tale was finished. His eyes burned and he stumbled to the floor just as he felt the hand of fate on his shoulder, strong and impossibly steady, wearing the guise of the fearless Jim Kirk.

He was dragged somehow—picked up? to the shuttering, sparking podship, Uhura screaming crucial orders over the disharmony and loud sizzling of destroyed wires.

When he had mastery over himself he looked around, the spacepod trembling off the ground, injured crewmen lining the floor like dolls.

Panting, he tilted his head up, breathing one thing immediately. "_Where's Spock?" _

The young captain darted to the open door as they rose into orbit, his hair still being tossed by the wind of the apocalyptic world below.

He swore Jim would have jumped, if he wasn't there to stop him.


	3. Ticking

**Ticking**

"This place is like a ticking timebomb," Jim pressed hotly.

"Captain, it would be most unwise to assert this opinion at the current moment. It is imperative we remain supportive. Peace may indeed depend on this singular catalyst." As always the Vulcan tempered the impulsive human, but this time his was tone grave, discordant with his usual calm. His clear speech was not one of impassiveness, its staccato aspect borne from distemper, as if speaking to a petulant child.

Jim paced, unconvinced. "If we contact Starfleet now they can send in another ship,-- there's no way the Treaty is going to get signed. There's, literally, still smoke in the air from the last rebel attack." He was upset. Spock could so easily see it. The captain took no pains to obscure his fierce emotionality and increasingly unhinged volume. Humans sometimes repulsed him with their recklessness.

"You do not know that," Spock countered with a strong bite in his voice, the intention of which was to seize the captain out of his own fitful mind. The ocean blue eyes turned to him told him his tactic had succeeded. "It is illogical to surmise the two warring parties will not sign-"

Jim scoffed, the room that held them dangerously silent. "Spock, _how_ can you say that! I'm shocked the guerrillas haven't leaped over the negotiation table—"

"I do not agree," Spock said with plain force, cutting off any other chance of persuasion. He saw the fire in Jim's eyes retreat back and burn hotter.

"You're not with me on this?"

"No."

Jim's stare bore into Spock's eyes. The Vulcan did not move a single millimeter. He held his gaze motionless, his hands locked behind his back. There was a resolute mien to Spock's stance, one which masked infuriation with his captain's obsession with his own personal feelings of intuition.

Jim's glance away was so easy to read. There was resentment living in every hitch of his bearing as he pushed past Spock without a word.


	4. Time flies

**Time flies**

The first year that Spock was missing seemed to slip away through his fingers like sand. The numerous moments were too impossible to count and yet bland and colorless, at the same time impossible to remember. After all, it hadn't felt like a year. It felt like it was yesterday that he had argued with him in the Vrindanian senate house.

He would refuse the mournful condolences that others gave him, wearing that expression, Bones knew, that meant he had yet to, and might never, concede.

The good doctor tried to pry loose that shield that was clasped over his untapped grief with words, _Accept it, Jim_.

Though despite his refusal, the captain continued his tenure without flaw and Starfleet was unconcerned. Many officers lost friends in battle, loses that sometimes rendered them incapable of certain emotions ever again. Good officers could continue to do their job.

Jim Kirk was a good officer. However, no one knew this was partly because as he walked the silent corridors of the _Enterprise _at night and listened to the soft woosh of recycled air, he could pretend something like peace existed. He was still doing his job. Making progress. Seeking out and contacting new civilizations. Going where no man had gone before. If that did not stop, then it truly wasn't over.

He would sit in the observatory and stare out into the depths of forever.

Anyways, anywhere in space was closer to Spock than going home.


	5. Slipping away

**Slipping away**

The second year Spock is missing Jim falls in love. Her name is Zola and she is a princess. Her home planet, Karmagon, is inhabited by a population of natural, emotive, jungle-dwelling people with a lust for expressive pleasure. Rich in resources and full of a primitive, kind-hearted people, it is classified a Developing Planet with an intent interest in joining the Federation of Planets.

Her musical eyes and dancing hips shift his sadness. When the crew of the _Enterprise _aids her father in keeping his throne against an enemy tribe, Jim feels like he fixed something. Not just then, but from _before_ too. Like something has been forgiven.

King Zuron calls him, "son," at the celebration, thanking Doctor McCoy for his lessons in herbology, medicinal advancement for his people. They are brave, he says, Ambassadors for the Federation, and friends.

Jim slips away to follow her because she calls him with her eyes. He forgets what it feels like to know someone through these lenses, and her intimate whisper assures him there is nothing but pleasure here.

The ferocious princess tangles his mind, she is a warrior and he kisses her out of desperation. She knows he is lonely, and asks him, "Jim, what makes you so, so heavy." He stares as she presses a palm to his heart, and then he is sobbing, telling her everything. Things he didn't know he wanted to say.

Zola tells him sagely that according to her folklore there is only one soul-mate for each person in the universe, but that she loves him anyways.

When they make love, for the first time, Jim doesn't think of him.


	6. Bad timing

**Bad timing**

Five years after Spock is missing Jim is promoted to Vice Admiral. He is the youngest member of the Fleet to ever achieve this rank, and in his short speech he mentions Spock's name three times. The entire auditorium shifts uneasily, though is accepting of this brilliant commander's eccentricities.

McCoy is seated at the table, watching the pain still so obviously etched on Jim's face, wondering if he'll ever get to see his old friend's careless, devil-may-care demeanor again. His eyes shift throughout the room of the formally dressed Starfleet personnel, and he notices Uhura, Chekov, and Montgomery Scott have tears in their eyes.

And suddenly, his gaze is drawn away from them, to a tall figure in the far doorway in a long robe. He can hear the sudden hitch in Jim's words and knows he's seen the figure too.

Bones can nearly hear the ache under Jim's voice as the figure pulls off his hood. It is a Vulcan. And Jim is off the stage, abandoning the speech midway, walking into the darkness of the room, causing, as usual, a scene. Another person quickly walks to the stage, placating the crowd with mindless soft music and Bones stands from the table with urgency, looking to keep his friend from pain.

He shifts through the crowded room, around the tables, walking to the dim back of the space to the vaulted doorway glowing with golden light.

It is Sarek, Spock's father, come to attend the ceremony.

Bones sees the expression on Jim's face.

"I sense an emotional disturbance in you," the older Vulcan notices, looking down emotionlessly at the younger man.

Jim is propelled back five years, light in his face for the first time, "It's just-- there's never a good time for someone to come back from the dead."

"I do not understand."

"You look so much like him."

The Vulcan Ambassador says nothing, unsure how to respond to the emotion in the human's eyes.


	7. Nighttime

**Nighttime**

Five years and one day after Spock is missing Jim has a dream. It is the most vivid dream he has ever felt in his entire life, like a secret oasis that disappears to the waking world.

He shoots up from his dead sleep, eyes red with slumber and confused from waking. His body is churning, coughing like a combustion engine hung in a museum on Earth, struggling to start his system while his mind is packed with shooting stars.

His hands are bent on the covers from abruptly hauling his consciousness into the world, and the moments between when he thinks to do it, and when he has his communicator shoved against his cheek, rapidly recounting his dream to Bones might as well have been nonexistent.

The doctor is cranky and his voice is heavy with annoyance as he asks Jim just what in hell is he talking about, glancing to the glowing clock near his bed with unmitigated agitation.

"I had a dream about him," Jim repeats, having to reiterate apparently inconsequential. Bones can hear the bewilderment in his voice.

"W—a dream about _who?_" the doctor's tired brows bend over closed eyes.

"_Spock._"

McCoy blinks, his arms crossed and his back propped harshly against the uncomfortable headboard.

Jim expects the disappointment in the folds of his friend's inevitable tone, the subtle pleading, the thin exasperation. The silence lingers a moment.

What he does not expect is the blank, "Me too."

"What?" comes the response, Jim for once caught off-guard.

"I said me too, I was dreaming of him too—that's," Bones pauses. "Coincidental."

"Wait," Jim's voice has been abducted by anticipation, hooded in a veteran caution. "Just now? Just now, when I called you—"

"Yeah," McCoy confirms, still uncertain about the whole ordeal and wishing Jim would stop sounding so thrilled. He's tired for Christ's sake. Unconsciousness is the one place Jim Kirk can't disturb him, and he wants to go back to bed. "What was your dream about," he asks to mollify his friend, hoping to pacify those nerves of his with some comforting words and then drift off to blissful rest.

"He was _sleeping_—" Jim squints. His voice was serious as he spoke, considering the memory of his dream with the concentration of a surgeon. "He looked perfect." His eyes soften, gaze drifting someplace away from his dark room. This is the part where Bones is supposed to come in, when Jim's voice turns down.

"He was sleeping in my dream too," the doctor responds, slightly wary of what he saying. Yet, there is a genuine surprise in the back of his mind.

Jim looks up, his eyes opening into the dark. "-what?"

"I said," the older man's voice, it was mutinously disregarding the fact that it had been five years. That his best friend needed desperately to move on. To stop it. To _forget_. "He was sleeping in my dream too."

The younger man was silent on the other end of the phone, the opposite of what he thought he would ever be if time and agonizing patience blinked an instant of open fate.

"I have a feeling," is all Jim says.

There was a long pause. A long pause when they both said nothing and everything. It signified their caution, the consideration of their careers, their compartmentalization of the past, and their evidently precarious sanity.

"Jim," the doctor sighs heavily, now fully awake. "I'm with you." He has a feeling he won't be getting that swell night's sleep for a while. Emphasis on _a while. _There is something in Jim's voice, something old yet familiar, that awakens the _good-god-why-am-I-doing-this_ resignation in the doctor's mind. "Whatever it is in hell you're thinking," he repeats, "I'm with you."

In a few moments, Jim is standing fully dressed in front of the mirror in his cabin. Looking at his face, he marks the first time he ever calls himself a reckless fool.


	8. Give her some time

**Give her some time**

McCoy has always wondered what precise element of Jim Kirk's character was the kicker. The skeleton key. The absolute full house which would crumble any opposition, flatline any opinion, or pummel any antithetical _reality._

Was it his eyes? Blue. _Ethereally _blue. Yeah, he figures, it could easily be the eyes. Or maybe it was the rakish smile. The ne'er-do-well-cad charm. His sturdy voice. His confident posture. His unerring earnestness. His ability to convince you the sky was green and the grass was blue.

He's watched as Jim expertly utilizes all these to his advantage, his secret weapons to pull out when they are going to be killed, scalped, marooned, gutted or blown to smithereens. However, this instance, may quite possibly be worse than all the rest, as the intrepid man begs the stoic Nyota Uhura to agree to their foolhardy plan.

She glances once to Bones, who stands back from this, finding it too emotional, like a scene in a novel that he can only read about. He wants to say something as she stares down at Jim with panther eyes, slits weighed heavily by skepticism and sadness. Her faith in impossible dreams was never, even in her most naïve youth, as strong as Kirk's compulsory optimism.

Plus, she has other demons to fight. Her past pulling on her emotions and snarling them as he begs her with this request: commandeer the _Enterprise_ and solely _on a feeling_, break every regulation Starfleet has ever had in order to find a man that's long since dead.

He tells her that he needs her.

He is watching Jim kneel in front of the woman, those impossibly blue eyes trying to reach whatever place inside of her holds the well of sympathy. His thumb strokes over her hand, and suddenly he has forgetton any charms of persuasion. McCoy sees the honest sigh of his body as Jim leaves those weapons on the field before her wall. His blue gaze reflects this. He is walking up with his arms empty of battle.

He begs her to bend because he knows that she once loved him, too. And for that, he has never begrudged her. Bright eyes, with all his peace at risk behind them. She looks away, and he waits.

And McCoy suddenly realizes, it's not his eyes, his smile, or his seamless bravado.

They follow Jim Kirk to the depths of hell because of his heart.


	9. Midnight, Past

**Midnight (Past)**

There was an old expression, Spock had said, one that was used to articulate wonder and amazement. "Seeing stars," or "to see stars" in the verbal form. This was, of course, a pre-space communicational idiom of the Earthly variety, in the language that was formerly labeled English.

Yeah, yeah, Jim would laugh. Get on with it Spock. He would smile, wet blonde hair against the Vulcan's burning chest, already losing the purpose of the initial statement. It was something he always did when Spock insisted on talking softly after. He was unable to follow his logic when he was tired and his heart was full.

But Spock's voice, he realized every time, was like a terrible lullaby. Terrible because to continue to hear it, Jim would force those drowsy eyes awake.

And those drowsy eyes latched onto the ceiling in their tired haze, his human heart burning against his ribs. It was something Jim could never tell, if that heat was a miraculous actualization of his feelings for this other man, or Spock's physical temperature blazing beside him.

The Vulcan's voice was smooth in the half-light of the cabin, a slender hand touching strands of Jim's hair while he was not aware. "To see stars," the Vulcan mused again, feeling the words against his lips. "I now understand this idiom."

Jim bent his neck just slightly, his eyes going up to latch onto black spheres. They were depthless orbs, but Jim wanted to skim his fingers against their bottom.

"Before I could not," Spock continued, interested in the tangents of his own, impenetrable mind. Jim watched the black brows gently furrow. "For a being that has matured in our century, often it is impossible to comprehend such archaic idioms for their true emotional intent."

Jim was content, mind swimming with blues and golds and silvers. Spock's voice was gentle, speaking words that seemed to have no purpose, conducting the soft symphony, lips moving against the blackness of the space between them.

"I see stars." Spock said, himself exhausted, sheets fallen to the floor. He looked down to the human man as his eyes shut sleepily, aware that he was not listening.

Jim's face was peaceful in the cobalt glow that streamed in through the window, illuminating the motes of dust that spun silently in the air. Spock ignored the starspace outside. There was a light outshining those heavenly bodies that burned in the sky, and he could feel it inside of his mind as surely as if he stared into the beams of a sun.

He was not ashamed to admit that he felt love for the human, Jim Kirk.

Tracing a soft finger down the curve of his cheekbone, he saw soft bruises from angry missions. He felt stubble on his skin. He listened to the breathing of the man in the silence.

He was not tired. Vulcans needed so much less sleep. So he watched in fascination as the human's eyes moved rapidly against his eyelids.

He found himself wishing Jim would wake up.

Of course this was illogical, but he didn't care.


	10. Midnight, Present

**Midnight (Present)**

Jim was awake. His eyes were wide in the dark, his back flat on cool, pristine sheets.

Moments of his life flitted in his mind like the last reels of an antiquated film, a clicking black-and-white movie that popped and sparked its final slides which read "THE END" and then whipped off the palate, leaving the viewer sitting in stunned reintroduction to the real world.

He saw himself as a child, his mother hugging his limp, confused body as she spilled whispered words, I love you, I love you, Jim, you know that, don't you? not staying to hear his answer.

He watched her board the starshuttle, trying desperately to remember the back of her blonde head as the gangplank sucked shut and she zipped away for who knows how long.

His eyes climbed with her to the sky and he felt the distance of space.

He saw himself as a reckless, unruly young man, getting booked by the Riverside police.

_Citizen, what is your Name._

He watched Captain Pike confront him in the _Photonic. _It was easy to pick himself out: the pathless boy with armor made from shanks of anger.

He saw himself in smiling audacity as he alone conquered the _Kobayashi Maru_.

He saw award ceremonies and battles, celebrations on alien planets and voyages that never seemed to end. He saw friends formed from enemies and enemies defeated for friends. He saw nights that dragged on for far too long by the bedsides of those he cared for. He saw exploration and brilliant science. He saw himself smiling.

He saw his career at Starfleet and all it ever meant for him. He saw that it was everything.

At S-0400 hours, he and his crew: Nyota Uhura, Pavel Chekov, Montgomery Scott, Hikaru Sulu, Christine Chapel, and faithful Dr McCoy, would enact the plan hatched between their collective genius.

They and the _Enterprise_ would be illicitly spacebound an hour afterwards.

Starfleet was suddenly going to vanish.

He found he didn't care.


End file.
